Simplicity is always what I look for, especially when that simplicity doesn’t take away from the effectiveness or the features of the tool. You can accomplish much more when you aren’t wasting time over-thinking the planning phase. That’s exactly what ToDoist helps you do.

So, when I learned that the makers of ToDoist had created another, similar tool for the purpose of helping teams accomplish great things, I knew I had to check it out, and I’m glad I did.

The web app is called WeDoist, and it allows small teams to manage up to three projects for free. It will help you collaborate with your group on coming up with tasks associated with a project, and assigning those tasks to members of the team. It’s one of the fastest and easiest ways I’ve seen to manage small groups – something that would really come in handy if you have a team assignment in college, or a project at work involving two to three folks.

Using WeDoist to Manage Your Projects

If you want to manage more than three projects, or you want to bring in a larger team, you’ll have to play a monthly fee for it. Otherwise, get ready to start managing your small team for free.

When you first sign up, you’ll have an opportunity to name your first project. Don’t forget to set your correct time zone so that time stamps that other members see when you edit tasks will make sense.

Each time you click on “Create a new project” and name another project, it’ll appear in your dropdown list under “Your Projects”. You can quickly switch to the project management section for that project by using this dropdown list and clicking on the name. As you can see here, I’ve created three projects related to improving my blog, and assigning article projects to my writers. The two writers will make up part of my WeDoist team.

On each project page, you can add status updates, if you just want to share some news or comments with fellow team mates. When you’re working with a team, this is a really good way to communicate, since with emails you can never be sure if your team overlooked your message or not. Also, when you put your communication right in WeDoist, it’s tied directly to the project, and anyone can go back later to check what you wrote or get any information you published.

When you’re on the projects page, click on the “People” tab off to the right to see a list of your team members, and stats related to how they’ve been using WeDoist. This will show how many tasks they’ve completed, as well as their status updates and comments across the project.

When you create individual tasks inside of the project, you can quickly attach a team member to the task. You’ll see all assigned members right under the task description.

Don’t forget to add a due date in the date box at the lower right corner. You don’t have to add a due date, but usually if a task doesn’t have a due date, it will receive the lowest priority, and it will fall victim to procrastination. Give it a reasonable due date. If you’re having trouble planning out your project and coming up with task due dates that make sense, then use a tool like Gantter to lay it all out before you start assigning tasks with WeDoist.

To the right of the task summary, you can also click on the comment box to include a full text describing exactly what that task entails. This button will drop down a large text box for that task, so there’s plenty of space to include as much detail as you feel you may need.

Whenever you want to assign someone to a new task, if you click on the “assign people” link, you can select their user account from the dropdown list. If you want everyone to be responsible for that task, you can just include “Everyone”.

On the main project page, you’ll see a newsfeed of all project activity, including completed tasks, updates and more. It’s project the quickest place to get a 10 second overview of how things are progressing with the project, because you’ll see how much is (or isn’t) getting accomplished at a glance.

You can also attach files to a project or task. Actually uploading files to WeDoist isn’t supported in the free account, but you are allowed to link to files via URL, or add files that are stored in your Google Drive. Those shortcuts will be displayed on your project or task page.

When you do add files, like a document from your Google Docs account for example, you can click on the names of your team members that you want notified about the file update.

Since your free account only allows for three projects at a time, when you’re done with a project, you can disable it by going to the project overview page and clicking on “Archive project”.

Another cool little bonus feature on WeDoist is that tucked at the bottom right corner of the screen, you’ll see a tiny little bubble that reads, “Project Chat”. If you click on this, a large chat window will open up.

This, my friends, is a nifty little team chat window that you can use whenever your team members are logged into WeDoist. This means that you can all meet up at a certain time to discuss project progress or work through any problems with any tasks.

Overall, WeDoist is like ToDoist on steroids – a collaborative project web app that will let you manage your small team, without forcing you to waste a lot of time with complicated project management tools that you don’t need. With WeDoist, your team will have time to just get the project done.

Give WeDoist a try with your small team and let us know what you think. Does it do everything you need? Is there anything you wish the WeDoist developers would add? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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João Valente

June 22, 2012 at 12:04 am

Nice and affordable tool indeed.

And if you need notifications (via status updates) when a push to certain github repository occurs I'm working on a bot that does just that. It's starting but its functional already. https://github.com/jvalente/pushist

Nice and cheap tool indeed!
And if you are interested in getting notified (via a status update) when a push to github occurs, I'm working on a bot that does just that. It's starting but its functional already.

I've added some more documentation about how to install Pushist at https://github.com/jvalente/pushist
Depending on your "newbie" level you may not master the necessary basics to get it working. Feel free to contact me if you need any extra help! It's good to know that this can help others. :D

Ryan has a BSc degree in Electrical Engineering. He's worked 13 years in automation engineering, 5 years in IT, and now is an Apps Engineer. A former Managing Editor of MakeUseOf, he's spoken at national conferences on Data Visualization and has been featured on national TV and radio.